FOREST NOTES 



The Sihlwald, or city forest of Zurich, 

 Switzerland, adds to the town's rev- 

 enues $7.20 per acre a year, reducing 

 the amount needed to be raised through 

 taxation by more than $32,000. 



In northern Idaho and Montana, 

 which had many fires during the past 

 summer, 35 per cent of the fires on 

 national forests were caused by rail- 

 roads, 26 per cent by lightning, and 10 

 per cent by campers. The remainder 

 were due to brush burning and other 

 miscellaneous or unknown causes. 



A mountain lion recently killed in the 

 Grand Canyon game preserve, which 

 adjoins the Tusayan national forest, 

 measured ten feet from nose to tail. 

 Mountain lions and other beasts of 

 prey, such as wolves, coyotes, and wild 

 cats, are killed by forest officers and 

 game wardens because they are a 

 menace to stock and to game animals. 



In the course of investigations of the 

 wood distillation industry of New York 

 by the College of Forestry at Syracuse, 

 it finds that the removal of the tariff on 

 grain alcohol has hurt the market on 

 wood alcohol in such a way as to make 

 it hardly profitable to produce w^ood 

 alcohol at this time. The chief products 

 of the destructive distillation of wood 

 are charcoal, wood alcohol and acetate 

 of lime. Charcoal is used for gun pow- 

 der, for fuel, in the manufacture of 

 iron, and for various poultry and 

 animal foods. Acetate of lime is used 

 almost wholly in the dye industries. 

 Wood alcohol is used largelv as a 



solvent and for various chemical pur- 

 poses. Beech, birch and maple are the 

 best woods for the production of wood 

 distillation products. Heartwood is 

 better than sapwood because it does not 

 contain so large a percentage of mois- 

 ture. Elm, chestnut and cherry are 

 not desirable w^oods for the wood dis- 

 tillation industry because they contain 

 too much tannin, gums, etc. 



J. J. Crumley, the secretary of the 

 Ohio State Forestry Society, who is 

 also Assistant Forester at the State 

 Experiment Station, believes in prac- 

 ticing what he preaches. As soon as he 

 engaged in his present position, he went 

 to the southern part of the state and 

 bought some hill land suitable only for 

 forestry purposes. During the first 

 two succeeding summers, he took his 

 family of four and spent his simimer 

 vacations on this land, and combined 

 delightful summer outings with the 

 latinching of his plan of improvement, 

 cutting in culled over woodlands and 

 reforesting vacant spaces. Up to date, 

 he has most of the vacant spaces re- 

 forested; and by removing the old culls, 

 the "left overs" from successive Ivmi- 

 bering operations, he has given the 

 more valuable young material oppor- 

 tunity to occupy the ground and air 

 space. Incidentally he has marketed 

 from this improvement cutting 60,000 

 feet of lumber, four car loads of locust 

 posts, and fifty crossties. The net 

 value of these products was about 

 $1,000. He paid $1,600 for the place 

 and has left the land, the finest young 

 timber, his buildings, and small orchard. 



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